Trent Champion de Crespigny a towering figure in Adelaide scientific medicine and pathology from 1920s
Trent Champion de Crespigny lobbied for an Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science, established in Adelaide in the late 1930s.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
Constantine Trent Champion de Crespigny, from a Huguenot family claiming distinguished descent from the 11th Century, was a towering, if eccentric, figure of Adelaide medicine from the 1920s.
The son of a conservative Bank of Victoria official, de Crespigny was educated at Brighton Grammar School and Trinity College, Melbourne University.
Specialising in pathology, in 1909 he was appointed to Adelaide Hospital. He continued his interest in laboratory medicine as honorary director of the hospital's pathology and lecturer in pathology at Adelaide University medical school 1912-19 but began private practice as a specialist physician in 1912.
In 1915, he joined the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) as a lieutenant colonel and was posted to the 3rd Australian General Hospital (AGH) during the Gallipoli campaign. From 1916 he commanded the 1st AG. at Rouen, France, returning to Australia in 1917, with a distinguished service order. He went back to England and in 1918 become consulting physician at AIF headquarters in London.
Next year, he became a member of the Royal College of Physicians and returned to Adelaide. De Crespigny was an honorary physician at Adelaide and Adelaide Children's hospitals. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1929 and among senior Australian medical men who founded the Royal Australian College of Physicians, that he led 1942-44. He published medical papers, mainly in the Medical Journal of Australia, between 1914 and 1944.
De Crespigny, tall, well dressed and wearing a pince-nez, spoke in a superior way that isolated him from associates and patients but his gifts as a diagnostician and knowledge of scientific medicine were outstanding in South Australia in his time. For 19 years from 1929, he was dean and chief examiner in medicine at Adelaide University medical school.
In 1908, he’d started a research laboratory in pathology in a tin shed behind Adelaide Hospital. He solicited funds from individuals, bequests and the state government for an Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science. It was established parliament in 1837 and he became its first chairman.
De Crespigny was president of the British Medical Association’s South Australian branch 1925-26 and presided over the medical section of the Australasian Medical Congress in Sydney in 1929. In 1945, he visited the United States of America looking at medical postgraduate education, especially affecting medical officers back from World War II.
